[Dragaera] some comments on _The Incrementalists_

[Scott Schultz]

I'd give this a three on a scale of five.

It seems I wasn't alone in feeling a strong Zelazny/Amber vibe in the
characters and the situation. Heck, we even have a Pattern in the Garden by
the end of the story. I think a lot of it had to do with the way the
characters interacted, with a measured mix of respect, fear, distrust and
unique skill along with the ability to seemingly manipulate the world at
will.

_Fireworks in the Rain_ gave a better look at that process, in a way that
made me think that a second Incrementalists book would feel more like the
book that most readers probably expected this book to be. 

Unfortunately, a lot of my initial reaction to _The Incrementalists_ is
"we've been down this road before", both in _Cowboy Feng_ and in _Freedom
and Necessity_. It also didn't help that I've been following Phil and Kaja
Foglio's _Girl Genius_ story forever and the story of Phil and Ren kept
mapping onto the story of Agatha and Gil. I was prepared to find out that
Celeste had tens or hundreds of "backup" stubs secreted around the Exo-brain
and that her real plan was to be Lucretia Mongfish, duplicating herself
until every Incrementalist was merely an extension of herself.

As far as that goes, I still don't really understand how Celeste invaded
Irina. I guess we're supposed to intuit that Irina was somehow spiked with
one of these backup stubs, maybe in a fashion similar to what Phil does to
Celeste's animus at the climax. It doesn't really explain why Celeste needed
Ren at that point, but then the "Celeste" in the picture at that point was
more of a computer AI programmed to behave like Celeste than it was actually
an instance of Celeste herself. I guess that "Celeste" was a kind of virus
in the operating system at that point, able to exploit flaws in the security
of the gardens attached to hers and exert some control over the minds of
their owners if she was the stronger personality. Ren's brain was her host
computer and apparently despite her mobility she was not able reprogram
another brain; she was a firmware construct and not a completely software
construct. 

Of course, that's one of the questions we're supposed to wonder about but
with the focus of the story squarely on Phil and Ren and their unlikely
romance, this is just one of many questions that are raised without ever
having any answers given. I guess they're supposed to be food for thought
for the reader or maybe they're just hooks to hang future stories onto.

I dunno, I guess I got my money's worth, and "Fireworks in the Rain" was a
decent, if predictable, follow-up. In a lot of ways, I feel less like I got
a story and more like I got an introduction to a new series that will tell
the real stories.